Rudimental, Academy, Glasgow, review: Entertaining work draws enthusiastic crowd response

Fusing underground styles with the contemporary pop mainstream has brought the quartet two chart-topping albums

There are four people in the Hackney-bred drum ‘n’ bass contingent Rudimental

Rudimental appear to be a democracy. There are four people in the Hackney-bred drum ‘n’ bass contingent, but they don’t make a big deal of pushing themselves to the front of the stage. Instead, their live sound is made using a large contingent of musicians and performers; a quartet on keyboards, a drummer, three horn players who add richness and texture, and another quartet of vocalists, two male and two female. The latter switch between solo turns and duets with one another, shifting texture from Anne-Marie Nicolson’s soulful croon to Bridgette Amofah’s sharper holler.

Their fusion of traditionally underground styles with the contemporary pop mainstream has brought Rudimental two chart-topping albums in 2013’s Mercury-nominated Home and last year’s We the Generation, and such crossover success is repeated at this sold-out first date of their new tour.

To an enthusiastic crowd response, they cycle through excitable drum ‘n’ bass on ‘Too Cool’ and ‘Love Ain’t Just a Word’, a light, Disclosure-style club groove on ‘Rumour Mill’ and the lean crossover pop of Bloodstream, shorn in this instance of its key collaborator Ed Sheeran. There are also on-the-nose vocal nods to their influences, including Ini Kamoze’s much-sampled ‘World A Music’ and General Levy’s D’n’B classic ‘Incredible’, yet these serve to emphasise the sense of formula and construction which informs their undeniably entertaining work.